Gelis paused and took a deep breath. She also lifted her chin and straightened her shoulders. Better to feign bravura than give Arabella the satisfaction of sensing her unease. So she glanced about as unobtrusively as she could, trying to dispel the day’s oddness.
But the mornwasodd.
And unnaturally still.
No sounds reached them from the nearby stables. No birdsong rose from the rowan trees beside the chapel, and not a one of their father’s dogs darted underfoot as they were wont to do, eager as they were for scraps of food or simply a quick scratch behind the ears. Even Loch Duich lay silent, with nary a whisper of lapping water coming from the other side of the isle-girt castle’s stout walling.
The water in the scrying bowl glimmered, its silvery surface beckoning, restoring Gelis’s faith as she knelt to peer into its depths.
“See? There is nothing there,” Arabella announced, dropping down beside her. “No future husbands’ faces and not even a ripple from the wind,” she added, poking a finger into the bowl and stirring the surface.
“No-o-o!” Gelis swatted at her sister’s hand. “We mustn’t touch the water!” she cried, horror washing over her. “Doing so will spoil the magic.”
“There wasn’t any magic,” Arabella scoffed, drying her fingers on a fold of her skirts. “You saw yourself that the bowl showed nothing.”
“It was glowing silver,” Gelis insisted, frustration beating through her. “ ’Twas the light of the full moon, caught there and waiting for us.”
Arabella pushed to her feet. “The only thing waiting for us is the stitchery work Mother wishes us to do this morn.”
“The embroidery she wishesyouto help her with,” Gelis snipped, tipping the moon-infused water onto the cobbles. “I ply my needle with clumsier fingers than Mother, as well she knows.”
“She will be expecting you all the same.”
Gelis clutched the empty scrying bowl to her breast, holding fast as if it still shimmered with magic. The face of her one true love, a man she just knew would be as much a legend as her father.
Bold, hot-eyed, and passionate.
Arrogant and proud.
And above all, he’d be hers and no one else’s.
“Let us be gone,” Arabella prodded. “We mustn’t keep Mother waiting.”
Gelis splayed her fingers across the bottom of the bowl. It felt warm to the touch. “You go. She won’t miss me. Nor would she want me ruining her pillow coverings,” she said, distracted. Faith, she could almost feel her gallant’s presence. A need and yearning that matched her own. “I’ll help her with some other task. Later.”
Arabella narrowed her eyes on the bowl. “If you persist in meddling with such foolery, she will be very annoyed.”
“Mother is never annoyed.” Gelis pinned the older girl’s back with a peeved stare as she left Gelis to stride purposefully across the cobbles, making for the keep and hours of stitching drudgery.
“Nor will I be meddling in anything,” she added, blinking against the heat pricking her eyes when the bowl went cold and slipped from her fingers. “The magic is gone.”
But the day was still bright, the light of the sun and the sweetness of the air too inviting for her to give in to the constriction in her throat. Across the loch, the wooded folds of Kintail’s great hills burned red with bracken, their fiery beauty quickening her pulse and soothing her.
She loved those ancient hills with their immense stands of Caledonian pine, rolling moors, and dark, weathered rocks. Even if she wouldn’t venture that far, preferring to remain on Eilean Creag’s castle island, she could still slip through the postern gate and walk along the shore.
And if her eyes misted with unshed tears, the wind off the loch would dry them. Not that she’d let any spill to begin with. O-o-oh, no. She was, after all, a MacKenzie, and would be until her last breath. No matter whom she married.
And shewouldmarry.
Even if the notion put a sour taste in her father’s mouth.
Swallowing against the persistent heat in her own throat, she glanced over her shoulder, assured that no one was watching, then let herself out the gate.
It was colder on the lochside of the curtain walls, the wind stronger than she’d realized. Indeed, she’d gone but a few paces before the gusts tore her hair from its pins and whipped long, curling strands of it across her face. Wild, unruly strands as fiery red as the bracken dressing her beloved hills, and every bit as unmanageable — unlike Arabella’s sleek midnight tresses, which ever remained in place.
“Shewould look perfectly coiffed in a snowstorm,” Gelis muttered, drawing her cloak tighter as she marched across the shingle.
Marching was good.
